


get on baby level

by aalphard



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Family Fluff, M/M, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29323983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aalphard/pseuds/aalphard
Summary: “Atsumu,” he calls as he walks towards him. “What are you doing?”He doesn’t look up, chin almost glued to the floor as he replies: “Baby proofing.”Huh.“On… on your hands and knees?”When he lifts up his head again, he smiles. “Yeah! I’m getting on baby level.”or: sometimes kiyoomi couldn’t help but wonder if she was going to turn out alright, being raised by them.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 33
Kudos: 277
Collections: SakuAtsu Fluff Week 2021





	get on baby level

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was written for the sakuatsu fluff week day 8 prompts: **family life/parenthood** || **"that's not what the instructions say"**
> 
> also known as the sakuatsu parents au i’ve been crying about on twitter for months!

In the darkness of the night, in the warm glow of the dawn, in that moment when black turns into purple, when purple turns into blues and pinks, the smallest little fingers reach upwards, reaching out for the warmth and safety of one’s embrace. A soft cry followed by a quick shush, the humming of an old lullaby as an exhausted figure waltzes around the room, standing close to the window to watch as the moon slowly disappears, as the sun climbs up to his usual spot, as the first rays of light touch the little fingers that reach forward, forward, forward, as big and round eyes stare up at him with an  _ ah! _

Dark circles under his eyes as he moves swiftly around the room, as he places her over his chest and holds her close. It’s the warmth of her presence, the way her tiny fingers explore the canvas of his neck, climbing up, up, up, the way she takes hold of his hair and pulls down  _ hard.  _ It’s the way they laugh in perfect synchrony as if that was a rehearsed play, as if she had been waiting for the perfect moment to do just that, the moment when the sun would shine brightly through the blinds and create a painting out of them.

Another sleepless night, gone just like that.

She holds on tight to his shoulders and giggles loudly as Kiyoomi presses a soft kiss to her forehead, to the curls that look so similar to his own.  _ Good morning, love, _ he whispers to the curious eyes staring up at him.  _ Are you hungry?  _ Another giggle bursts through as she takes hold of another curl, tugging him down again and again and again. It’s been like this since day one, since they opened their door and introduced her to her home. She immediately took a liking to him, clinging to his shirt and not letting go when he first tried to put her down in her crib for a nap.

Kiyoomi laughs when she babbles in a language he can’t understand, looking at him for approval and nodding her head as if she’s trying to prove a point. He nods back and she almost shrieks, tongue poking out at the corner of her mouth as dribble runs down her chin in a way that is  _ almost _ cute, Kiyoomi thinks now. At first it was terrifying, all kinds of bodily fluids quite literally exploding out of a tiny human that kept crying and crying and screaming and clinging to him in an animalistic way and  _ oh, my god, can we return her? _

When she pouts and her eyebrows shift into a frown, Kiyoomi knows it’s time.

On a normal morning, he would pick her up and walk around the house until he got to the kitchen. He’d follow the protocol of leaving her on her high chair somewhere he could still see her and start working on her breakfast. She’d coo and giggle and mumble baby-nonsense and Kiyoomi would agree, nodding and answering her as if she’d understand what he was saying. Things like  _ yes, absolutely, you are a genius _ were some of the things he’d say as he smiled down at the fruits he was mashing.

He’d get her a bottle and let her choose which one she wanted first. Usually, she’d start with the puree and then the formula.  _ Wise choice, _ Kiyoomi would tell her as he wiped the remains of mashed bananas from her cheeks and chin. She’d grin that almost toothless grin (because she already had two tiny teeth poking out, mind you) at him and Kiyoomi wouldn’t be able to resist her charms, chuckling softly as she tilted her head to the side, curls bouncing and hands flying up as a giggle burst through again.

But that would be a normal morning.

Today isn’t a normal morning.

“What,” Kiyoomi starts, eyes squinting at the scene unfolding before him. “Are you doing.”

It’s like the aftermath of a battle, if Kiyoomi’s being honest. 

The cushions are all over the floor, the couch slightly out of place and someone on all fours, head tilted down and eyes wide as if he’d been asking for forgiveness after being defeated. He clicks his tongue, groaning in frustration as if he’d been trying to find something small on the floor, something really important. Kiyoomi clears his throat, their little girl squealing in response. Atsumu looks up at him with an innocent smile, blowing kisses at her before turning around, still on all fours, and humming softly to himself that  _ ah, yes, okay, I think I get it now. _

“Atsumu,” he calls as he walks towards him. “What are you doing?”

He doesn’t look up, chin almost glued to the floor as he replies: “Baby proofing.”

_ Huh. _

“On… on your hands and knees?”

When he lifts up his head again, he smiles. “Yeah! I’m getting on baby level.”

_ Huh... _

Kiyoomi blinks. He looks at the baby he’s holding, looks at her pout and the way her curls look so much like his own. He looks at the dribble dripping down her chin and onto her shirt, at the little fingers playing with a loose strand on his shirt. And then he looks at Atsumu, still on all fours, squinting and poking his tongue out of his mouth in concentration.  _ Today isn’t a normal morning, today isn’t a normal morning.  _ Atsumu hums and groans as he tries to move like a baby, crawling and letting his chest hit the floor with a  _ thud _ .

It’s only when Kiyoomi looks away from him that he sees the pile of parenting books Atsumu stacked over their coffee table. There are all kinds of books, varying from the cliché of those  _ what to expect when you’re expecting _ to the more Atsumu-like  _ weird parenting wins _ . 

“How many of these books have you read?”

“I don’t know, like… six?”

Okay. 

Atsumu was going insane. 

“And you’re getting on whatever baby level is because…?”

He looks up, sweat rolling down his forehead as he smiles at him. There are dark circles under his eyes, too, and he groans as he moves around to sit facing them. Hiromi laughs from where Kiyoomi is standing, her curls bouncing and her little arms reaching forward, towards Atsumu, towards the cushions thrown all over the floor, towards everything that is out of reach. When Atsumu smiles, a soft chuckle escaping his throat, Kiyoomi can only think that, despite the exhaustion that lines his features, he still glows.

_ Come on, _ he whispers at her,  _ come to papa. _

Kiyoomi walks slowly towards him, making sure Atsumu is holding her properly before letting go, letting himself hit the floor with a loud  _ thud _ and a groan as he feels his muscles complaining, screaming in pain from all of the sleepless nights and the strain of having to carry Hiromi everywhere, her little fingers tracing the moles on his neck and shoulders, pinching and giggling whenever Kiyoomi hissed.

“The book said the best way to do it is to see things the way our baby does,” Atsumu explains in a silly voice as he lifts her up and makes silly faces. “So I got on my hands and knees and I tried to find out what kinds of dangers a baby might experience around the living room.”

_ Right. _

“You do know she can’t even sit up on her own yet, right?” Kiyoomi asks with a chuckle, his head hitting the soft fabric of their couch. “We won’t have to worry about that for another month or so.”

“No, no, no,” he shakes his head and brings her close to his chest, her head resting over his shoulder as she babbles a  _ ba ba ba _ . “That’s not what the instructions say, Omi. The faster we do it, the easier it’ll be later on. I already got the gates, we just need to install them. I’m thinking maybe put one in each room so she doesn’t crawl somewhere she’s not supposed to. Oh, and also stairs. We have to keep those safe so we can have one at the top and one at the…”

Hiromi is staring at them, her huge eyes shining with newfound excitement as Atsumu rambles on and on about the baby gates and how he’s already placed edge bumpers on their furniture and how they’re already strapped down to the floor  _ just in case she decides to push or pull them one day.  _ He talks about cord holders and how hard it had been to use them, the wires wrapping themselves against his wrists and his arms and how their TV almost fell down on top of him.  _ Maybe I’m the one who needed to be protected from the big stuff falling down,  _ he said.

He talks about the safety locks they still have to get and those  _ amazing pinch guards to keep her from gettin’ her little fingers caught in the space between the door and the wall, we have to get that, Omi.  _ He holds her close as he points to the framed pictures over their bookshelves and TV unit, her little fingers mimicking the action.  _ Those? We have to get rid of ‘em. Can’t have this little girl here bumping against it and cutting herself with the glass.  _

Yes, Atsumu was going insane, it’s the only explanation for this whole thing.

“When did you do all this?”

He blinks up innocently at him as Hiromi pats his head with strings of  _ ba ba ba ba _ and  _ pf pf pf pf _ , smiling and squealing when Atsumu poked his tongue out at her. “Oh, that? I did it when ya got out of bed last night. I heard her crying and I was about to go but yer always faster than me. And I waited for ya to come back but ya didn’t. I was worried so I went to see if somethin’ happened but then I saw ya dancing around with her and she was giggling so I came down and started doing this.”

“You could’ve just… gone back to sleep?”

He grins. “Not without ya, I couldn’t.”

It shouldn’t have made his stomach twist, it shouldn’t have made heat crawl up his face, not after the thousands of times he’s heard these exact same words. Not after they’ve done things far more embarrassing than that, not after they’ve exchanged rings and vows and let themselves become one. It shouldn’t have made him squint, scrunch up his nose and look away from him. It shouldn’t have made him groan in frustration because  _ shut up, Miya. _

“That doesn’t work anymore, Omi,” he pokes him on the side. “Yer a Miya, too.”

He wants to scream.

When Atsumu blows kisses at her, Kiyoomi feels his lips breaking into a smile, his heart flipping over a thousand times. Hiromi blabbers in baby language while Atsumu pokes her on the stomach, while he pinches her cheeks and nuzzles her softly. His fingers disappear in the midst of the forest that her curls make over her head and under her tiny body as he holds her closer and closer until she whines in complaint.  _ Sorry, sorry, just couldn’t help myself, yer too cute for yer own good, love. _

_ Fuck _ , it’s the only thing Kiyoomi can think as he watches them.

It’s a renascentist painting, the scene unfolding in front of him. It’s the bright and warm yellows glowing over his head and inside his eyes, the darkness emanating from her hair and the fondness in her eyes as she smiles at him, as she reaches upwards and drags one finger through his face, as he laughs and asks her:  _ what is it, did I have somethin’ on my face? _ It’s the harmonious sound of their laughter, it’s the way it makes Kiyoomi’s whole body go up in flames because he never knew he could love someone so much, never knew love could be so warm, so inviting, so  _ them. _

They are both exhausted, sure, and none of them knows for sure when it was the last time they slept through a whole night without being jolted awake by a sob or a desperate scream. None of them knows for sure when it was the last time they could take some time off and laze around all day, watching movies and dozing off on the couch. It’s fine, they tell themselves, because listening to the  _ ba ba ba _ s and the shrieks and giggles is way better than spending two hours watching the same clichés over and over again. It’s fine, they tell themselves, because they can see a bit of each other in the tiny body they hold in their arms, even if they weren’t the ones who carried her, who nurtured and cared for her while she was being carefully manufactured by someone’s body.

She’s theirs.

The adoption papers are kept in a drawer in their nightstand. Sometimes, when falling asleep is too hard, Kiyoomi picks them up and traces her name with his fingertips as Atsumu snores softly next to him. Sometimes he cries. Sometimes he gets up and walks to her nursery and sticks his head inside just to make sure she’s alright. Sometimes he sits down and hums a lullaby by himself, hearing her sleepy sounds as she dreams. And when he gets back to their bedroom, Atsumu is looking up at him with a sleepy, knowing smile.  _ We have a baby _ , he usually says,  _ we’re a family, Omi. Now come back here and lemme cuddle ya. _

“Is it possible to love too much?”

Atsumu pauses in his tracks, his finger tracing the lines over Hiromi’s nose, over her cheeks and on her cupid’s bow. There’s a faint blush over his cheeks, a light pink Kiyoomi would’ve missed had it not been for the soft morning light creeping up on them through their open blinds. He smiles sweetly, licking his lips and looking down at the child he’s holding, at her long lashes and the pout she’s learned from Kiyoomi. There’s a furrow in her brow as she looks at Atsumu, as she blinks slowly as if she’s trying to figure out what’s wrong. 

And then he looks at Kiyoomi again. 

He sighs. “No, I don’t think so.”

Kiyoomi gulps, nodding softly. Big, round eyes stare up at him as Hiromi starts rambling in baby language again. They pay attention to it, giggling when she stops dramatically as if asking a question. She’s tapping Atsumu’s cheeks, pinching his nose and letting her head fall down over his shoulder whenever Kiyoomi starts talking to her.  _ I think she likes ya more than she likes me. This is unacceptable. _

It’s only when her lips start quivering and her eyes close, tears already starting to gather and slide down her cheeks that Kiyoomi gets up and brings her along.  _ Right,  _ because that’s what he came down to do. He needed to get her food and then give her a bath and let her decide whatever else she wanted him to do. He  _ was _ going to, really, but living with Miya Atsumu was bound to make one forget about everything. Sometimes it made Kiyoomi wonder if she was going to turn out okay, being raised by them.

“Hey, Omi? Should we get the plain white pinch guards or the ones with the pretty designs?”

Kiyoomi leaves Hiromi on her high chair and turns around to face Atsumu, still sitting on the floor with his head thrown over to look at them. There’s a magazine in his hands now and he’s pointing at a page Kiyoomi can’t see from this distance. He hums as he turns around again, walking towards the cupboards and the sink, picking up the chopping board and a knife. It’s pretty simple: fruit puree and formula. It’s not that simple: working on something when Atsumu is suddenly resting his chin over your shoulder and breathing softly on your neck as he whispers your name.

“What are you doing?”

Strong arms are suddenly enveloping him, hugging him from behind as Atsumu presses kisses against the skin of his neck, a soft hum of the lullabies he was singing to Hiromi earlier today reaching his ears.  _ It’s definitely possible to love too much,  _ Kiyoomi thinks,  _ because there’s no way this pain in my chest is anything but the consequence of a love that grew too big. My heart is about to burst.  _

“Kissing ya,” he answers simplistically. Kiyoomi can almost picture him with his eyes closed and that smug smirk of his tugging at his lips. “And I wanna know. Plain white ones or pretty designs? There are a few with animal faces but they’re terrifying and I don’t wanna make ‘er scared of walking around.”

As if on cue, Hiromi starts squealing. She hits the chair and looks over at them with a big, satisfied smile on her face as if she already knows this is where she’s supposed to be, as if she knows that’s where  _ they _ are supposed to be and all of a sudden Kiyoomi wants to scream again. No one’s ever told him it would feel like this, loving someone, getting married, starting your own family. It’s stressful and exhaustive and  _ yet. _

Yet, Kiyoomi can’t seem to get enough of it.

“We should get the white ones,” he says, finally. “The designs will probably make her want to play with them and if that happens she might be able to pull one off and that’ll lead to her getting pinched and lots of tears.”

Atsumu nods. “I should’ve thought of that, yeah.”

“You should’ve thought about lots of things,” Kiyoomi replies with a side glance. “Especially the bit about the whole  _ turning the house upside down to baby proof _ . It would’ve been less of a shock if you told me. I almost dropped her.”

“ _ Nah _ , that’s on the list of things ya’d never do, Omi.”

He’s right.

But  _ still. _

“Is there anything you still have to do?”

“Hm?”

“Baby proofing.”

He can’t believe he’s asking this and much less the fact that he’s  _ considering  _ it. He should be finishing her breakfast and then thinking about her bath and the clothes she was going to wear and the book he would read to her to get her to sleep for a bit before lunchtime. He should  _ not _ be thinking about pinch guards and strapping furniture to the ground when she couldn’t even roll over on her own yet. And yet. 

“Are ya really asking me that?”

“Yes. Is there a problem?”

Kiyoomi knows he’s made a mistake when he turns around (just a bit) to look at him. He knows it was a terrible mistake because now Atsumu is grinning at him, that childish grin of his, and a soft giggle bursts through as he holds him tighter, as he knocks the breath out of Kiyoomi’s lungs with a bite to his shoulder and a groan as he whispers soft words against his skin,  _ have I told ya I love ya today? _ , as he sighs and nuzzles his neck, as he hums the songs they’ve danced to at their wedding reception, the songs they’ve danced to in their empty house as soon as they moved in. 

Miya Atsumu, Kiyoomi finds out, is ridiculously unfair.

“Not at all,” he replies, his lips glued to Kiyoomi’s neck. “We have things to buy. I can make a list and clean things up while ya feed and bathe her and then I’ll make us something yummy for breakfast and we’ll go out to look for those. What’cha think?”

Today isn’t a normal morning. 

“Okay,” he says, throwing his head back a bit to press a chaste, soft kiss to Atsumu’s lips. “Now leave, I need to feed that tiny gremlin over there before she starts crying.”

Atsumu laughs, nodding and kissing Kiyoomi’s neck again before letting him go. He stops by the high chair and pinches Hiromi’s cheeks before kneeling down and talking to her about all of the pretty things they’re going to buy.  _ Hey, Omi? Can we also buy her those cute little rompers we saw the other day? _ She stares at him with her mouth hanging open, eyes focused and sparkling as if she fully understands what he’s saying.  _ What’cha think, love, we’ll spoil ya rotten with all of those cute little rompers and those adorable little shoes. _

Kiyoomi smiles. 

It’s not a normal morning, but… 

Hiromi laughs wholeheartedly, her voice echoing all around the house. Atsumu follows right after, thunderous and sweet all at once. Kiyoomi settles for a silent snort, shaking his head and looking at them fondly from where he stands in the kitchen. Atsumu is still kneeling down, his fingers close to her cheeks as he talks and talks and talks and Hiromi is holding one of them in her little hand, gripping tightly as if she doesn’t ever want to let him go.

… maybe that’s okay, too.

**Author's Note:**

> you're free to come yell at/with me on [twitter](https://www.twitter.com/aaIphard) (´꒳`)


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